Firefighter Promise Burning For Her (Harper's Family #3)

Prologue The Man Who Runs Into Fire

Cole

The roof is already burning when we pull up.

Orange fire chews through the second-story windows of the small ranch house, smoke pouring into the night sky in thick, rolling columns. The engine barely stops rolling before I jump off the side step and grab my helmet.

"We got a victim still inside!" a woman screams from the lawn.

My brain clicks into place like it always does on a call. The calm, controlled place.

"Harris, line to the front door," I bark, already moving. "Mendoza, with me."

The heat hits me halfway up the walkway. Even through turnout gear, it feels like opening an oven door with your whole body. I don't slow down.

Inside, the smoke swallows my headlamp down to a weak tunnel of light. We move low. Crackling wood. Burning plastic. The deep groan of a house slowly giving up.

Mendoza finds him first, a man down in a bedroom doorway, unconscious, smoke curled around him like it had already claimed the body.

"Got him," Mendoza says.

I drop beside them, check the pulse. Weak. But there.

"Let's move."

We lift him together. That's when the ceiling cracks a sound every firefighter learns to fear. Deep. Rolling. Final.

"Drop!"

We yank the victim down as a section of drywall and burning insulation crashes into the hallway where we'd been standing two seconds earlier. Debris explodes across the floor in a shower of sparks.

Then we move. Fast. The victim's boots scraping across the floorboards, fresh oxygen feeding the fire at our backs, the front door a pale rectangle of cold air ahead of us.

We burst outside, and hands grab the victim from us.

The paramedics surge forward. His chest rises. Barely. But it rises.

The woman from the lawn drops to her knees beside him, sobbing, clutching his hand.

I step back. Pull off my helmet. Cold air hits my face, damp with sweat.

He made it out. That's what matters. That's always what matters.

By the time I get home, the town is quiet. Whiskey Bend always is at this hour. Still. Peaceful. Like nothing bad ever happens here.

The illusion is almost convincing.

I push open the front door, and Smokey hits me before I clear the threshold, claws skidding on hardwood, tail going hard enough to knock the wall, a low bark that fills the whole entryway.

"Easy," I say.

He plants his front paws on my chest anyway. Nose pushing against my jaw, checking me over like he always does after a call. Making sure I came back in one piece.

I drop my gear by the door and let him.

He follows me to the kitchen. Sits at my feet while I drain half a bottle of water in one go. Watches me with those steady brown eyes like I'm the only thing in his world.

I reach down and run a hand over his head. He leans into it. "You're enough," I say quietly.

He doesn't understand the words. But he understands the tone. The reassurance. The lie.